"I started doing this when I was fifteen, 'cause my dad was a criminal and I wanted to stop him. I went out with nothing more than a homemade costume and some gymnastics training, my first few months were spent like that. I guess you could call it training on the job." She hasn't talked about it much, because most of her friends have been there for the whole journey, so to speak.

"I took a break for a while, when I came back I got some training from different people in the same business, mostly martial artists. But that was on and off for a couple of years." The bitterness in her voice is fairly obvious; Steph had loved working with Black Canary, but it'd been stopped for reasons she still doesn't understand. And then Cass had stopped training her too, just because Bruce said so. She'd been mostly on her own then, until she became Robin. "I went through a four month period of pretty extensive training with one of the best in the business."

"After I had a falling out with that trainer, I spent a year not doing anything vigilante related, though I kept fit by doing kata, weight training, gymnastics, and other stuff like it. I've been back at it for a little over a year, and I've had consistent training for about six months of that, with assorted teachers."

There's a fair bit she's left out, mostly her reasons for spending time away from being a vigilante and Steph's not sure why exactly she felt compelled to give Laura a somewhat detailed history. Part of it is wanting to prove that she can handle it, that she's been at this long enough to kno what she's doing. But she also just appreciates the chance to talk about this stuff.